April 15, 2006

Mommy Wars: I Love The Smell Of Napalm In The Morning

Ahh, the Mommy Wars. Still, even though she's pursuing a diplomatic solution now, there's no denying the war-mongering rhetoric of Leslie Morgan Steiner's book. She took us to war under false pretenses--hey, now everybody in Washington's doing it! Dogpile!--and now we're paying the price.

But hey, a guy likes to watch a good fight, right? So Sandra Tsing Loh's devastating carpetbombing review of Mommy Wars from The Atlantic should be entertaining, at least. And since in her takedown, Loh doesn't really even acknowledge the existence of dads either, except as "men," the distant wielders of all power and no familial responsibility, I've apparently got no dog in this fight.

The crazy thing is, I went to Wharton. I used to do investment banking. We've set up camp on both battlefronts: Cleveland Park and uptown Manhattan. My Ivy PhD wife works full time. On paper, anyway, Leslie Morgan Steiner and her Mommy Warriors are supposedly my people. And yet, I find myself cheeering every explosion.

That said, "Afflufemza"??? And here I am, believing it wasn't possible to coin a word more annoying than "grups."

2 Comments

Every male in the story seems to be a husband itching to uproot the family in the name of a few more bucks.

The whole thing burns me up. It's not a male/female issue you boneheads, it's an hours-in-the-day issue. I'd write more, but I have a headhunter on line 4 with an angle on a killer opportunity in Omaha.

[that's her story, anyway. I just got back from B&N where I skimmed through the book. It's funny that Los slams "Mommy Wars" for its all-mediapeople bias, while "Maybe Baby" uses its "28 writers talk about becoming parents..." as a selling point. If everyone was leading a writer's life, it'd be fine, but by definition, most moms'--most parents'--stories are not going to be told in any book. -ed.]